Tag Archives: customization

Speed Dial is a popular browser feature introduced in Opera and later adopted by Chrome that was a little late in coming to Firefox. The feature debuted in Firefox 13 but was soon plagued with security problems that took considerable time for Mozilla to patch up. While the feature was still absent in Firefox, many add-ons were developed to compensate for its lack, and many developers have strived to improve it since its comception, getting creative with what they can do with it. Newtab: Rows & Columns is a Firefox add-on that lets you customize the number of rows and columns on the speed dial pad in the new tab page. The extension allows you to add as many speed dial buttons to the page as you like, but instead of letting you simply customize their number, it allows you to customize the dimensions of the speed dial grid.
Read More

A while back, we reviewed Pimp My ROM that offered Android users possibly the largest collection of various system performance enhancement tweaks, hacks and mods bundled into a single package. Ranging from Kernel-based tweaks to internet & network-based mods, the tool allows both intermediate and advanced users to tinker with a lot of settings of their rooted Android devices. New to the scene, Android Tweaker by XDA-Developers senior member iGio90 is a similar tool that could prove to be a tough competitor to Pimp My ROM and other Android tweaking solutions currently available in the market. As with Pimp My ROM, Android Tweaker is equipped with loads of tweaks allowing you to play around with various performance-related settings of your Android device. Needless to say, the app is meant to work with rooted Android devices only. A good thing about Android Tweaker is that it is fully compatible with almost all Android devices, versions, kernels and ROMs (both stock & custom). Let’s explore this handy utility in detail after the break.
Read More

Windows RT has been around for a few months now, with Microsoft's own Windows Surface being the primary device this tablet-friendly OS has been running on so far. Recently, when XDA member clrokr successfully jailbroke Windows RT, it resulted in opening up doors of possibilities for the homebrew community to run ported x86 desktop apps on ARM architecture. By now, a multitude of app have already been ported to the platform by various users, and one of the awesome additions to the ported apps library is Rainmeter. For those who don't know about it yet, it's a fascinating desktop customization utility that allows you to give your desktop a complete makeover. In what follows, we will guide you through the process of changing that boring desktop look and spicing it up with Rainmeter’s plethora of gorgeous skin packs.
Read More

Live Wallpapers have been a distinctive feature of Android since the very early days of the OS. Over the years, we have seen some visually attractive and amazingly functional Android Live Wallpapers arrive in the Play Store, with most of them supporting extensive personalization. Today, we're bringing you yet another highly customizable Android live wallpaper app in the form of Ditalix by Fahrbot – the creators of several nifty Android apps including SwitchMe, CallMaster and Undelete. Sporting a plethora of customizable glow styles, designs, themes, pixelated effects, animations, palettes, interactions and layout settings, Ditalix is your very own custom Android LWP generator. Using all the aforementioned tools, a custom background image of your choice and personalized settings, you can design sparkling live wallpapers that respond to your taps and touches in the form of various glowing animations.
Read More

I've always wanted to customize my Windows 7 desktop using Rainmeter to add some interesting look and feel to it, and RocketDock to get rid of the taskbar. But it has never been possible to totally neglect the taskbar, only due to the start menu, which held so many applications in place. In short, I gave up on the idea of customizing my desktop. But since Windows 8 has replaced the Start menu with the Start Screen, I can continue with the customization, and you too can learn how it's done!
Read More

Sometimes the smallest of things can make all the difference. With everyone trying to customize their iPhone these days, it is not necessary that you apply a whole new theme to your iDevice to make it stand out, even a relatively small tweak like LabelEnhancer can do the trick. The functionality offered by LabelEnhancer might appear to be a bit insignificant in some people’s eyes, but you can’t deny the fact that the tweak is really unique. Using LabelEnhancer, you can change everything about the labels of apps on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The tweak offers options to change the font, color, size and shadow style of app labels. The choice of colors available in LabelEnhancer is unlimited, as you can use predefined colors or define your own RGB values.
Read More

When discussing some of the most reputed Android app developers, you can ill-afford to overlook Root Uninstaller – the creators of some very fine apps, such as Root Uninstaller, Smart RAM Booster, 1Tap Quick Bar and quite a few other handy tools. Each time these guys release an app to the Google Play Store, users know that they’re in for an effective and impressive solution to their routine Android-specific issues. Same is the case with the team’s latest release, Smart Settings, that can, at best, be deemed as a powerful combo of hyper-extensive Android sound and system profile customization and event-triggered profile management. This fully Holo-themed and free app is aimed at users who’re either discontent with the rather constrained and disorganized stock profile settings, or are looking for convenient and automated means to switch between the required profiles on their Android. Not only Smart Settings consolidates your system’s network, display, sound and sync settings under one hood, but also lets you extensively personalize each, and switch between the required ones with a tap. In addition, it can also automatically switch between various user-defined profiles as per the specified rules for battery level, WiFi status and/or custom time intervals.
Read More

The team behind a couple of hugely successful Android apps, Root Uninstaller and Smart RAM Booster, are back in business, and the app on offer this time around is arguably the most comprehensive notification widget personalization solution that we have come across so far. Surpassing the versatility and level of customization of most (if not all) of its counterparts, 1Tap Quick Bar tries to enhance your multitasking experience on Android manifold. It does so by empowering you with the option to pin customizable bar/widget(s) to your Android’s notification panel, so that you may quickly launch required apps and trigger system toggles, music playback controls, quick launch actions, contact interactions and/or virtually any aspect of your Android that you wish to have at your fingertips. It lets you stack up to as many as six different apps, tasks, system settings and/or required controls on a fully customizable notification panel widget. In just a few taps, you can define multiple custom widgets, complete with an outlook of your choice, and activate only the required ones. The extent of personalization ranges from specifying a custom widget background and text visibility settings to choosing from various icon sets and text color for the widget content.
Read More

Fresh to the Google Play Store, Hive Locker is a free, custom Android lockscreen replacement app with polished looks, an online theme and wallpaper library, and plenty of user-friendly features that help make your Android device’s lock screen productive as well as visually appealing. The app lets you explore and download various catchy lockscreen themes from its online repository and embellish your device’s lockscreen with a custom background image. It also supports its own neatly-built notification center that can display notifications pertaining to the total number of unread text messages, as well as the message content. The app also comes with its own built-in pattern unlock to help you secure your beloved Android. Moreover, it can be set to show/hide the status bar on the lockscreen, play various audio tones upon unlocking the device, and last, but not the least, brings several quick access controls that can be used to unlock straight to your favorite caller, messaging and camera app, toggle the flashlight On/Off, or circle between various sound profiles.
Read More

Weather apps for mobile devices are mostly known for adding plenty of flair to your screens, while at the same time, depicting all sorts of up-to-date weather-related information. Google Play Store alone sports dozens of eye-catching and immensely informative weather apps for Android devices, but when it comes to customizing the looks and feel of a mobile weather app to the very core, not even my personal favorite, 1Weather by OneLouder Apps, comes close to matching the comprehensiveness of Recast, an offering of XDA member mstroud. Currently in beta, Recast is a beautifully-designed and fully-customizable weather app that sports a sleek full-screen interface, as well as multiple customizable/skinnable homescreen widgets that come in as many as six different sizes.
Read More

Cydia store is all about customization, and no matter which part of iOS you are talking about, the jailbreak store is sure to offer something related to it. There are a lot of themes and cosmetic tweaks in the Cydia store, but there are some areas of an iPhone that are just taken for granted, and people never think about changing their appearance. One such item is the volume HUD in iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The translucent square is a seemingly unchangeable aspect of iOS, but a new Cydia tweak attempts to modify all that. VolumeCustomize lets you change the color and opacity of the volume HUD, and not only that; you can even choose a custom image to use as the background for the volume indicator!
Read More

What makes Android different from many of its competitors is the degree of customization it offers its users, which goes to the extent of even letting users choose what is essentially the primary user interface of any operating system – the home screen Launcher! With Android, you can choose from a plethora of available launchers offering a diverse user experience range, and it’s just as simple as installing the launcher like any other app. In what follows, we will take you on a feature tour of some of the best Android launchers available, to help you choose the one that’s right for you.
Read More

In the past, we have covered a lot of Cydia tweaks (and apps) that allow users to make a number of cosmetic changes to their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. When it comes to tweaks, most of them focus on altering one or two aspects of iOS at a time. You will be hard-pressed to find a Cydia tweak that can be used for the customization of various iOS aspects, unless you are talking about something like WinterBoard. That’s what makes SBUtility stand out among the rest of the Cydia crowd. This tweak allows its users to change almost everything regarding the looks of their iOS device, all in one place. The tweak offers options to customize app icons, folders, Springboard, dock and lockscreen. We are not talking about one option for each of these categories, either; SBUtility offers detailed customization possibilities for all these areas of iOS. Head past the break to know more about this awesome tweak.
Read More

Windows Phone Hacker’s new homebrew, Tweaks, might not be something like the previously released Bazaar for Windows Phone 7 devices, but the rather small collection of tweaks offered by this WPH app is pretty impressive in its own right. If you own a Mango phone that is interop unlocked, then there is no way you are not going to like this homebrew. Some of the tweaks offered by WPH might not be new, but some are, and even for older ones, it is nice to have them in one place, where you can use them with convenient toggle buttons. Read on to know everything about all the options WPH Tweaks brings to WP7. Read More

Most users want their Windows to be customized to their own liking and comfort, and they start changing options here and there soon after installing the OS to their system. Customizing your Windows, starting from your desktop icons and background to the way your queries are handled and files are displayed in Windows Explorer, are part of the customization process. Sometimes, however, it happens that you change a setting which causes an issue and when you go back to revert it back to normal mode, you cannot seem to remember where exactly the option was located. That is where tweaking tools come in. They provide you with a unified interface to access and change multiple default and added settings for Windows that allow you to quickly tweak your system according to your requirement. Sunrise Seven is one such application that is designed for Windows 7 and provides you with a long list of tweaks to change and manage from within the interface. Keep reading to find out more about Sunrise Seven.
Read More

If you have a jailbroken iOS device, then you must be familiar with the plethora of themes and other cosmetic accessories which form the bulk of objects on offer in most repositories. The personalized themes let you make changes to your iPhone’s keyboard, background colors, lockscreen and even the slider at the unlock screen. SlideToMod is a new Cydia tweak which will ensure that you can customize the lockscreen and slider of your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch in the exact way you want. The tweak will let you personalize the unlock slider’s text, and you can also remove any stock icons you want as well. Read on to know all about this easy-to-use tweak.
Read More

The whole point of jailbreaking and having a Cydia store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is to gain the ability to customize different areas of iOS. From time to time, the developers over at the jailbreak store keep coming up with ways to tweak not only stock iOS apps, but even a few third party ones as well. Customize Facebook, as the name suggests, is a jailbreak tweak which will let you revamp the Facebook app for iOS. Not only does it come with options to add a lot of new animations to the app, using it, you also get to tinker with a lot of other aspects of Facebook, to give the app a completely new look.
Read More

A few weeks back we brought you our handpicked collection of the best free and most beautiful Android Live wallpapers, with a promise to bring you a similar one of the best free and functional Android Live wallpapers. The wait is finally over, so read on to find out how you can add fun as well as functionality to your phone using these amazingly functional Live wallpapers for Android.
Read More

Love tinkering with the looks of your Android’s screen? Try Full Screen Launcher – a free homescreen replacement app for Android that takes an altogether different route to display your homescreen and the various contents that are present on it. Apart from sporting graphically appealing UI and a brand new concept of merging various homescreens into one large, unending wall, all packed with contacts, shortcuts, widgets et al, Full Screen Launcher provides you with 3D folders that are displayed on your screen as rotating cubes, whose each side carries thumbnails of the content that is present within.
What’s best is that you can even place widgets, as well as contacts, within those folders, and access them in the same way as your homescreen or app drawer.The eye-catching animations and transition effects while navigating to various segments of the launcher and reflection of all the icons at the bottom of the screen are nothing but sheer feast for the eyes. The ability to zoom in/out of the walls (screens), effective support for the launcher in landscape/portrait orientation and the extension of all the elegant animations/effects to the app drawer are some of the other highlighting features of Full Screen Launcher.
Read More

The recently-released iOS 5 brought with it a very handy feature of assigning custom vibration patters to specific contacts. Not only does this feature help users easily identify incoming calls from any contact, it also lends a helping hand to visually/audibly impaired users in figuring out as to who’s calling them. Android users need not be envious of this feature anymore, as ViBe is here! Based on the aforementioned concept, ViBe lets you assign custom vibrations to your contacts, so you can easily know your caller without even having to look at your phone. The app comes with as many as 10 different free/paid custom vibration patterns that work equally effectively in silent, as well as in ringer mode.
Read More

Topics

Authors

Daily articles in your inbox each day for free

About Addictivetips

AddictiveTips is a tech blog focused on helping users find simple solutions to their everyday problems. We review the best desktop, mobile and web apps and services out there, in addition to useful tips and guides for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Read more...